CWB National Leasing expands thriving IT department

By: Arthur Anhalt, Vice President, IT

Are you an experienced IT professional looking for a chance to work on cutting-edge projects?

It can be difficult to find a position where you get to own the expert role; a position where senior leadership values and encourages your opinion and recognizes you’re the trained professional they hired to do the job.

It’s also not very often you find an award-winning corporate culture where free fruit Tuesdays, meditation classes and hockey Fridays with the executive team are regular occurring things.

Combine these two things with the opportunity to work on innovative IT projects – right from the idea phase to full-fledged implementation – and that’s what you have at CWB National Leasing.

Since the company’s inception in 1977, CWB National Leasing has striven to be a leader in technology and innovation, to stay ahead of the curve with industry-leading products and services that allow employees to service customers faster and easier. The best part – CWB National Leasing develops the majority of these products and services in-house to make them completely optimized for its business.

One of CWB National Leasing’s first major advancements in technology was developing an automated credit adjudication software system to process credit decisions faster. In 1998, Microsoft recognized the product, FastCredit, as one of the year’s Best Software Solutions.

“CWB National Leasing has always embraced change and recognized we need to continually develop our processes in order to meet our customers’ changing needs,” says Lola Hutton, Director, Business Process Improvement and 20-year veteran at CWB National Leasing. “This mentality to always look for ways to improve through technology and innovation is part of what’s made us so successful and led us to develop some game-changing solutions.”

Some of CWB National Leasing’s recent tech achievements include National Leasing Interactive, a mobile tool that provides instant financing quotes, and an entire core system replacement. The core system replacement was a massive undertaking, but CWB National Leasing’s team of project managers, business analysts, developers, architects, quality assurance analysts and change management professionals stepped up to provide a completely customized, state-of-the-art system.

“I’ve worked on new system implementations at other organizations, and it can be very chaotic,” says Tia Hatch, Senior Business Analyst, CWB National Leasing. “When we launched our core system replacement last year, it felt like business as usual at the office – that’s how we knew it was a huge success.”

What enables CWB National Leasing’s success in technology and innovation?

CWB National Leasing’s senior leadership team empowers employees to come up with solutions to challenges within the business. If they can show how their ideas will provide solutions and drive business forward, leadership gives them the resources needed to make it happen. This process is exactly how National Leasing Interactive was born, and it went on to win the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association’s Operations and Technology Excellence Award in 2016.

Because CWB National Leasing has seen so many successes from empowering employees to drive development and change, the company recently implemented a new initiative called the Business Transformation System (BTS). With this new system, employees can easily submit their ideas for improvements within the business. The BTS team ranks ideas based on strategic alignment, ROI and resources required and then moves them into development if deemed relevant. These ideas can be big or small; improvements on existing systems or new ideas entirely. As this initiative continues to help the company grow, CWB National Leasing is looking to expand its talented team of forward-thinkers.

So, if your workday is starting to feel stale, if your opinion isn’t valued, or if you’re craving a little more fruit Tuesdays in your life, be sure to keep a close eye on CWB National Leasing’s Careers page. Over the next few months, there will be opportunities in our IT department including project managers, business analysts, developers, quality assurance analysts and a number of other positions, and we’re on the hunt for some really creative people looking to refresh and build their careers with CWB National Leasing.

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To give you a better sense of the CWB National Leasing philosophy, we gathered some of the brilliant minds behind the BTS and chatted with them about their jobs.

ON USING THE NEWEST/LATEST TECHNOLOGY

Todd: We use cutting-edge technologies, so when we’re building something it’s never on old stuff. We consult with our employees, do research and always get the newest-of-the-new. We use the latest versions of programming languages, the most up-to-date frameworks, and the tools we use to build software and manage issues are fully automated.

ON EMPLOYEES BEING PART OF THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

Melissa: The people we hire will have a lot of say on how things are designed, developed and implemented. These are the people on the ground floor who can see first hand what’s working and what’s not, or a better way to do things. Nobody knows better than them what we need, so that’s who we trust to guide the process.

ON CREATING INTERNAL SOFTWARE

Lola: We’re not working for an invisible end-user. Here, I can walk downstairs and see Lisa in the coffee room, and she can tell me how she’s using the product. You gain ownership that way. It’s not a matter of meeting a client’s requirements, ship it off, and on to the next one. Here, we have a real dialogue with the people using it on a daily basis. You’re getting feedback and interaction, which people can really appreciate and integrate going forward.

ON THE KIND OF PEOPLE WE NEED

Lola: We like people that aren’t afraid to be creative and come up with ideas. We hire people who have initiative and drive, who are confident and who can think for themselves;, people who want to be trusted to go out and find the answer and not have their hands held.

ON HOW CWB NATIONAL LEASING PRIORITIZES TECHNOLOGY

Todd: In an older mindset, you’d look at IT as more of a cost, something you have to spend money on because you have to keep the lights on. Instead, we see IT, business process improvement and project management as a way to enable growth and add a competitive edge to our organization. This is why we continue to invest in these areas.

ON CULTURE WITHIN THE IT DEPARTMENT

Melissa: I think it’s pretty rewarding to work here! We’re all viewed as equals, including the IT management team, so there’s no big hierarchy. People are comfortable speaking up, which is what we want from everyone. And while it sounds so cliché, we go by the work hard, play hard motto. Yes, we have deadlines and we drive hard to meet them. But we try to balance that with A LOT of fun, and we allow our employees to do what they need to do to blow off steam. Some examples include the annual Rock Paper Scissors tournament, the Burpee challenge, and Nerf gun wars. It’s not initiatives management comes up with, either; thanks to our culture, people take the initiative because they know we support and trust them.

Be sure to check us out on social media to see what we’re up to!

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In a nutshell, that’s IT at CWB National Leasing. Check out our Careers page to find out what opportunities are available today! And if we don’t have an available position right now that piques your interest, we’d still love it if you apply for future consideration.

Feel free to get in touch with Laine Jubinville, our Talent Acquisition Leader, if you have any questions.